


By Their Deeds

by Thia (Jennaria)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Complicated Sibling Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-21 00:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11346510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennaria/pseuds/Thia
Summary: Soulmates exist!  Unfortunately, as Sara could tell you, soulmarks are only visible to your soulmate, and not always conveniently placed somewhere easy to see.  How do you find your soulmate when all you have to go on, is how people act?





	By Their Deeds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xianvar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xianvar/gifts).



> Thanks to T and S for beta-reading, and to my recipient, whose prompt got me thinking about a pairing I hadn't paid attention to!

TROPHEE ERIC BOMPARD, ABOUT FOUR YEARS AGO

It was the least dramatic 'how we met' story ever, but Sara refused to lie: she met Mila Babicheva because a rubber band snapped.

(Michele insisted they'd have talked anyway, just because they were both female figure skaters at the same event, and Sara was 'too friendly for your own good.' Michele, in Sara's private opinion, was a giant hypocrite who thought the other female figure skaters would lure Sara into trouble, and anyway Michele himself only talked to other _male_ figure skaters to tell them not to date Sara. Perhaps she and Mila _would_ have talked anyway, but Sara preferred stories, and the rubber band - for all its lack of drama - was a story.)

The meeting happened like so: Sara standing at the mirror, touching up her make-up, adding a bit more color so her eyes would stand out. Then a sudden sting, her hand jerked, and her eye brush went _into_ her eye. "Ow!" No no no, her eye was watering and she didn't have time to redo _everything_ \--

"Crap!" someone said right next to her. "Here, I've got tissues."

"It's fine," Sara said, gratefully accepting the tissues. She carefully dabbed at her eye, trying to keep her makeup from running. "Thank you," she added, belatedly, leaning forward to peer at the results. "Did you see what --"

"It was me," her benefactor said, with an audible wince. "My rubber band snapped, and I think it hit your hand. I am so very sorry."

Sara blinked - no tears, thank heaven! - and turned to see who this was. The girl next to her - who really did look like a girl, she couldn't have qualified for Seniors by more than a year - had her pretty face pulled into an apologetic grimace, and long red hair currently floating freely around her face - well, yes, her rubber band had broken, of course it was. Sara automatically glanced at the hollow of the girl's throat, and refused to admit to the pang when she saw only skin. She _knew_ soulmarks didn't necessarily appear right there - she'd read Leopardi's AN INCOMPLETE SURVEY OF SOULMATES same as half the world - but her eyes still automatically went there, the first time she met someone.

"No, I'm fine, thank you for the tissues," she said, and then, to try to cover for her staring, "Are you actually using _rubber bands_ for your hair? Doesn't that tear it up?"

"Yeah, but they're the only things I've been able to get that keep my hair _back_ ," the girl says, pulling another face.

"If you're willing to try -" Sara had brought only her small bag with her, not her entire kit, but she rummaged in it anyway, and emerged triumphant. "They're American, but they're very good. Better for a braid than a pony-tail, perhaps."

"I'm no good at braiding...I mean, I can manage a boring single braid, but it doesn't stay, I swear I should just cut it all off, but maybe if someone..."

" _I_ know how to braid," Sara said firmly, although the girl seemed to have herself half-convinced already. "Let me help."

"Only if you'll let me help with your make-up," the girl said, and fluttered her eyelashes at Sara. Dark, well-mascara'd eyelashes, and eyeliner with a better wing than Sara could accomplish without help. 

"Of course!" 

The girl hesitated, then offered her hand to Sara. "Mila. Mila Babicheva." She grinned suddenly. "So you know who you're loaning your hair-ties to."

"Sara Crispino," Sara said, and shook Mila's hand.

As she braided Mila's hair - a simple French braid, easy enough for Mila's coach or rinkmates to duplicate later - and then as Mila re-did Sara's make-up, Mila kept talking. At first about expected things, like skating, costumes, and music. Mila's short program was to a selection from Stravinski's _Firebird_ , "which I like! But it's _so_ stereotypical for a Russian. The only thing more stereotypical is my _long_ program, which is to Rimsky-Korsakov, _Scheherazade_ , boring."

"Alessia - Rio, she won bronze at the Italian championships last year - she skated to _Tosca_."

Mila half-turned in her seat, as if trying to look up at Sara. "Tosca is _boring_?"

"Stop that," Sara said, and gently forced Mila to face forward again before she lost her grip on that beautiful red hair. "To an Italian skater, yes, as boring as Rimsky-Korsakov is to you."

"Huh," Mila said, then, "What are _you_ skating to?"

" _The Devil's Trill_."

"Lucky!"

"Still by an Italian, though."

For some reason, this made Mila laugh. Fortunately, Sara had just reached the end of Mila's braid, so she waited out the laughter before tying it off. "There you are," she said.

"My God." Mila leaned forward, tilting her head this way and that to better look at the braid. "This is amazing. Thank you!" Before Sara could even say _you're welcome_ , Mila bounced out of her chair. "Now your turn! I owe you twice, now, for the rubber band _and_ for the braid!"

Mila used Sara's own make-up, to Sara's private relief - she'd had fair-skinned rink-mates insist she try their favorite make-up before, and it never turned out well. But still Mila talked. Not about skating, or music, but about people - rinkmates, friends, rivals, boyfriends. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

Sara wrinkled her nose. "No. I have an over-protective twin. He thinks no man is good enough for me."

"What about girls?"

"Ha! I don't think it occurred to him." Sara shrugged one shoulder, carefully, so she didn't disturb Mila's careful work. "I don't know. Maybe he'll relax when I meet my soulmate."

"Oh! Do you have a soulmate?"

"I hope so."

Mila leaned back to examine her work,and Sara caught a wistful expression on her face, It vanished too quickly for Sara to be sure, as Mila said, "Good luck! In the meantime, I'm done, so we should both go change." She put away Sara's make-up, then leaned down and hugged Sara with unexpected fierceness. "I don't think we're in the same skate group, but - watch me skate?"

"Of course," Sara said, surprised. 

Mila nodded sharply. "And I'll watch you. See you later, Sara!"

Sara watched her go. She really did have to finish changing into her costume, and somehow find the blazing arrogance that the Devil's Trill required. But just for a minute, maybe she could linger in this...whatever this was, that Mila left behind her.

*

ROSTELECOM CUP, THIS SEASON

The Rostelecom Cup sprawled over four days this year: Friday the short program for men and pairs, Saturday the short program for ladies and ice dancing and the long program for men and pairs, Sunday the long program for ladies and ice dancing, Monday medals, exhibitions, and the gala banquet. They could have easily fit Sunday and Monday's schedule together, but this way Sara had the chance to rest between her long program and her exhibition after accepting the silver medal she'd earned. 

That assumed Michele _let_ her rest. He hovered outside the Kiss and Cry while she waited for her final score, looking at her like - like the heroine of some tragic opera, and then vanished before she could say anything to him. He called her, and hung up on her voicemail. He might have tried to go to her hotel room, for all she knew: Mila offered to let Sara stay with her, and Sara leapt at the chance.

They spent a fantastic night sprawled over the hotel beds, talking about music, and skating, and Mila's most recent ex (who should've become an ex long ago, in Sara's unbiased opinion), and Michele, and Viktor Nikiforov and Yuuri Katsuki because who _wasn't_ talking about them this season, and then, when they'd exhausted the new gossip, about _Kukhnya_ , a Russian TV show that Mila had discovered and insisted Sara had to watch.

"'Kitchen'? I thought you hate cooking."

"I do," Mila agreed. "But it's hilarious anyway. And it's on YouTube, with English subtitles!"

Sara fell asleep on Mila's shoulder, partway through an episode. She woke up with a blanket tucked over her, still pillowed on Mila somehow. She lay there, listening to Mila's slow breathing, wrapped in her warmth.

_What if --_

Not thinking about that, she told herself, not for the first time. It still took a few minutes before she could slide out from under the blanket, to write a note so Mila knew where she'd gone, and then go back to her room to shower and change before going to get breakfast.

She'd finished her breakfast and a first cup of coffee, and was lazily considering a second cup, when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Her brother. He came in, saw her, hesitated, turned as if to leave, turned back, took a step toward her, hesitated again -

"Sit down, Michele," she said, refusing to look up at him.

"I didn't know if you'd want me to join you," Michele said quietly, and sat down next to her.

For a second, Sara wavered. "You're still my brother," she said, then, before she could lose her courage _again_ , "but you're not my soulmate, and you need to stop pretending you are."

She expected - well, something. Him to ask if she'd met her soulmate, because how else could she know for sure. Him to yell, or throw things, the way he had before when she brought up soulmates. Instead, he sighed, still quiet, and said, "You don't _know_."

"Michele--"

"I remember...I remember when we were little, and Nonna told us the story of Adam, and how Lilith left him because she was not his equal, so God took a piece of Adam's body and a piece of Adam's soul to create --"

"I _know_ the story, Michele, you don't need to repeat --"

Michele raised his voice a little, talking over her. "--to create his equal, his true mate, and how God left a mark on Adam and Eve to signify that --"

"Oh my God, you aren't --"

"--that their souls were one, and you loved that story so much that you went around asking _everyone_ if they had God's thumbprint on them --"

"Would you quiet down? Why are you repeating this story?"

"--and nobody understood, so you cried! But I did! I understood you! And I promised myself --"

"I was _five_! We were five!"

"--promised that I'd never let you cry again, not because of anyone!"

"Instead I should cry over _you_?"

Echoing silence. Sara took a deep, shuddering breath, and realized she must have gotten to her feet somewhere in that, yelling right back in Michele's face. She sat down, and folded her arms across her chest. Michele followed her example, glancing around the room uneasily as if he'd only realized just then that they might have an audience. 

"I…" Michele stopped, and folded his hands together on top of the table, keeping his eyes fixed on them rather than looking up at her. "I'm sorry. But what if you don't _have_ a soulmate?"

That shouldn't have hurt, but it did. "I'll never know if you keep getting in the way of my looking," Sara said. The words came out more harshly than she'd intended, and she bit her tongue on the impulse to apologize in return.

Michele flushed. "And while you're looking, I should just, what, ignore what you're doing?"

"That sounds better than what you've _been_ doing. I won't treat you like a wicked witch if you'll stop treating me like a maiden you've put in a tower." Mila had said that, last night. Hopefully Michele wouldn't recognize the source.

Michele looked up at her again, and sighed, yet again. "I thought that was Georgi Popovich that was a witch," he muttered, then offered his hand. "I'll try. I'm still going to come support you at the Grand Prix Final!"

"Of course you are," Sara said, and prayed - yet again - that she'd find her soulmate first.

*

ITALIAN NATIONAL FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS (ALMOST), THIS SEASON

After her fourth-place finish at the Grand Prix (half a point behind Mila), Coach Fontana sent Sara off for private ballet lessons. "Too much time with Russians," Coach said sternly. "You have concentrated too much on jumps and forgotten your grace!" So here she stood, stretching out before a private lesson as if she were a junior skater again.

She had no music playing, however, so when there was nothing to drown out the girls in the hallway outside her practice room.

"Bet they are."

"Bet they're not."

"I _hope_ they're not - can you imagine _Victor Nikiforov_ with a soulmate?"

Sara straightened out of her stretch at the familiar voice. Wasn't that Elena from her rink? A chatterbox with strong opinions, which was how Sara knew that Elena loved cats and Victor Nikiforov, hated her current coach (who insisted she spend at least one more year in Juniors, for reasons that changed each time Elena told the story), and planned to sweep the Italian Championship, the Grand Prix, the European Championship, _and_ the World Championship her first year in Seniors. 

"Oh, Elena," one of the other girls said. "You're so unromantic. Why don't you want Victor to have a soulmate?"

"Maybe she wants to _be_ his soulmate," another girl suggested. By the amount of giggles coming from around the corner, there must be several girls there: perhaps a ballet class had just finished.

"Ha!" Elena said. "I do want a soulmate, but not because of Victor. Don't you _know_?"

"Know what?" someone else said skeptically, from far too close to the doorway to Sara's room. Sara hastily sank into another stretch and pretended she hadn't been listening. Dammit, couldn't they just move to the changing room?.

"The _real_ reason why everybody wants a soulmate," Elena said. "It makes you _better_."

Sara raised her head to look incredulously at the wall. She'd had the 'why a soulmate' argument with Mila - once and only once. Fortunately, one of the girls agreed with Sara. "Really? Not for love?"

"It's true!" Elena insisted, and Sara recognized that tone of voice - although she usually heard it from the far side of the rink, when Elena's coach told her _no_. "I was reading this book, AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF SOULMATES? And they found soulmarks on _every Nobel Prize winner and Olympic gold medalist_."

A general murmur of amazement, broken when the skeptic said, "I thought nobody could see soulmarks except your soulmate, unless you're dead."

"They look for them in autopsy," Elena said shortly. "Don't be stupid, everyone knows soulmarks are visible after death."

Another murmur, not quite as amazed this time. Sara smirked as she got to her feet and went over to the barre for one more set of stretches. Maybe now Elena would stop trying to show off, and clear the hall so Sara's teacher could get here.

"No wonder you think Victor doesn't deserve one," someone else said, out in the hall. "He already wins all the gold, so he doesn't need a soulmate!"

"I don't know," another girl said, more thoughtfully. "Yuuri Katsuki maybe deserves one."

"Better him than Michele Crispino!"

She had to finish her stretches, Sara reminded herself firmly. And anyway, she wasn't talking to her brother at the moment, not after he'd spent the entire Grand Prix behaving like he hadn't learned anything from --

"What about Sara Crispino?"

"Not with _Victor_. I'm pretty sure he prefers men."

"No, I mean - isn't she soulmates with her brother?"

Sara froze in place, halfway through a bend.

"No, of course not," Elena said, far too clearly. "If they were soulmates, she'd be better than fourth in the world."

"Which is still better," Maitresse Contardi said from somewhere down the hall, "than any of you are likely to do, if all you do is linger in the halls and gossip like chickens. Go change! You will find neither soulmates nor fame, standing about here."

By the time the maitresse came into the room, Sara had recovered herself, at least enough to greet the maitresse with a bow. When she rose from the bow, she found the maitresse studying her with a rueful quirk to her lip. "How much of that did you hear?"

"Enough," Sara said, with an attempt at a shrug.

"Hmph. Is it true that you have cut off your brother at last?"

Startled, Sara said, "As much as I can," before she could catch the words back.

"Good," Maitresse Contardi said firmly. "You will never find what you seek with him holding you back."

"Do you mean a gold medal or a soulmate?" Sara asked.

"Why choose? Now, back to the barre - if you were listening, you were not stretching properly. Again!"

*

EUROPEAN FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS, THIS SEASON

Sara ducked around a pillar in the hotel lobby. _Damn it, Michele!_ She'd come back to the hotel early to try to text Mila, not to meet up with Emil, or Georgi, or whoever Michele thought she'd fallen in love with _this_ time. She'd found her brother talking to the concierge, looking around like he thought he was some kind of spy.

"Are you all right?"

Sara jumped, and turned around. Yuuri Katsuki, of all people, was sitting in one of the chairs tucked into this niche, eyebrows raised. 

"I'm fine!" She glanced over her shoulder. No Michele so far. "I'm fine," she repeated softly. "I'm hiding from my brother."

"I see," Katsuki murmured, and looked down at his phone. "I don't know how safe a hiding spot this is --"

"I promise I'll be quiet!"

Katsuki blinked at her, then smiled, just a little smile that somehow lit up his entire face. " _You_ might," he said. "I don't know if Mila will. You _are_ waiting for her?"

"I haven't texted her yet. She doesn't know I'm back at the hotel," Sara confessed, and sat down in the other chair. "I'll tell her to sneak in."

"I didn't think she knew how to sneak." Katsuki set down his phone on the tiny table between the chairs. "But I only met her a few months ago, and at practice…" He waved his hand, as if to describe Mila jumping around.

"Well, true," Sara said, thinking about it. "If she's around her rinkmates, she yells a lot. Although maybe that's just Yuri - Plisetsky, I mean. And Georgi. I haven't seen her much around Victor, but he always seemed so intimidating."

She caught herself too late, and bit her tongue. Katsuki only ducked his head in something not quite a nod, and - had his smile actually gotten bigger? "It's difficult to find him intimidating when you've heard him go on about how he's afraid he's losing his hair," Katsuki said.

"Losing his -" She couldn't have heard that correctly. " _Victor Nikiforov_ thinks he's losing his hair?" Wow, that was _definitely_ a grin on Katsuki's face. "My God, I'm never going to be scared of him again."

"Good," Katsuki said, then, more hesitantly, "Mila talks about you very often. I'm sorry you're hiding from your brother, but, uh…"

'I'm glad to meet you too," Sara said, guessing at what he meant. From the returning smile, she'd guessed correctly. She offered her hand to shake, which Katsuki took. "It feels like everything I know about you is from Mila. Or Phichit." You couldn't be in figure skating and escape Phichit's social media. "You skate for Japan, you won silver at the Grand Prix, you're soulmates with Victor -- I mean. I'm sorry! Again! I shouldn't have --"

"It's all right," Katsuki said, though he'd paled a bit at the word _soulmates_. "It's not something - in Japan, we don't look for soulmarks. Soulmates are bound by a red thread, which only certain people can see. With Victor...I chose him, and he chose me. We might be soulmates. But it doesn't matter."

Sara shook her head. "Lucky," she said.

"Mmm," Katsuki said. His color had come back. "Have you texted Mila yet?"

"Dammit," Sara said, and grabbed her phone to the sound of Katsuki's quiet laughter.

*

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS, THIS SEASON

It's the least dramatic story ever. Four years after meeting Mila Babicheva, Sara Crispino glanced up in the changing room before the ladies' long program, and saw something on Mila's back, just beneath her arm, bright and obvious and like a lightning strike to the head.

 _Oh._ And then, _I should've known. Maybe Yuuri Katsuki was right._

"Sara? Sara, are you okay?"

"Fine," Sara said, then shook herself and tried to remember how she should sound. "I'm fine! I promise!"

Mila tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. "You're standing there, staring at me, only half into your costume. That's not 'fine.'"

"I… _will_ be fine?"

"Try again," Evgenia said dryly from the other side of the room.

Couldn't everyone just pretend she and Mila were off someplace else and ignore them? "I _will_ be fine," Sara repeated firmly, "it's not a problem, it's just not something I can...sort out before we're due on the ice."

"Did you figure out you're in love with Mila?" Ziquan called from her corner. 

"What?" Mila said blankly, at the same time as Sara hissed, "Will you _shut up_!"

"So long as she doesn't pull a Katsuki, she'll be fine," Yvonne said.

Sara took a deep breath, then tugged her costume up the rest of the way and reached behind herself to zip it up. "Thank you," she said. "Is there anything _else_ you would like to say? Anyone? Rika?"

The Japanese skater shook her head, very wide-eyed, although whether that was because Sara had spoken to her, because Yvonne had been snarky about Yuuri Katsuki, or because Sara was apparently being an _idiot_ , she couldn't tell.

Sara looked up at Mila. At least Mila was smiling. "In love with me?" Mila repeated.

Sara reached, took Mila's hands, and kissed her fingers gently. "After the free skate," she said firmly.

Mila looked over at the other skaters, and sighed. "You are all a bunch of _voyeurs_ ," she said, then to Sara alone, "After the free skate. In the meantime - watch me skate?"

"If you'll watch me," Sara promised.

Mila left a few minutes later. Yvonne only waited until the door closed before saying, "And that's why nobody is surprised."

"Oh, be quiet," Sara said, and headed for the door herself. She paused long enough to say, "And nobody say anything to my brother until _I_ can."

"So there's definitely something to say?" Evgenia said with a grin.

Sara closed the door rather than answer. She had to go find Mila. But first - first she intended to have the skate of her life, dedicated to her soulmate.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: that Russian TV show really does exist, and really is on YouTube with English subtitles. The more you know!


End file.
